


your soul’s old and so are these jokes

by friedgalaxies



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Datekou Week 2021, Datekougyou | Date Tech, Gen, Pranks and Practical Jokes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-17
Updated: 2021-03-17
Packaged: 2021-03-25 17:00:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,597
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30092247
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/friedgalaxies/pseuds/friedgalaxies
Summary: Sasaya Takehito has been likened to an old man more than once in his life.
Relationships: Kamasaki Yasushi & Moniwa Kaname & Sasaya Takehito
Comments: 4
Kudos: 6
Collections: Datekou Week 2021





	your soul’s old and so are these jokes

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [The Fine Art of Getting Even](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4050856) by [fathomfive](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fathomfive/pseuds/fathomfive). 



> for datekou week’s day three: **third years | pranks** | celebrity

It starts when Takehito complains about his hip.

And really, it’s not all that much out of the ordinary. Takehito complains about his chronic pain often, the pain that he’s dealt with ever since fourth grade when he and his older brother were out sledding, one of those old wooden slat sleds with the metal runners, and had attached it to the four-wheeler that Takehito’s brother technically wasn’t allowed to drive without one of their parents supervising but he’d driven anyway.

Takehito had fallen off the sled, his brother took it around a turn and the sled came slamming into his ten-year-old side metal runners and all, putting a clean fracture almost all the way through Takehito’s left femur.

And really, because this isn’t all that new of a complaint of his, it’s only the response to the complaint that starts it all off.

Sakunami Kousuke, dear, sweet, Sakunami, who hadn’t quite yet joined them officially at Datekou but was skilled enough of a libero to join them for afternoon practices when Takehito was in second year, who had responded to Takehito’s comment that his hip was giving him trouble again with,

“Oh, my grandpa has hip problems! I can show you the stretches he does for it!”

Which, really, what a kind thing for a sweet kid like him to say, if he hadn’t been in direct earshot of Kamasaki and Moniwa during practice that afternoon.

Kamasaki spluttered a laugh, going red in the face and dropping the volleyball in his hands which bounced harmlessly away towards the door, the very direction Takehito wished he could’ve been going himself. “Your grandpa?”

“Yeah!” Sakunami said, seemingly not realizing the grave mistake he had made and the fact that Takehito was never going to know peace again, expression and bright as shining as it had always been. “He has to use a stair lift, you know, the wall mounted ones—“

Kamasaki burst into another round of cackles, Takehito’s face quickly going red in hue, considering this was long before he learned to let everything Kamasaki said and did at his expense roll off his back with the same kind of detached expressionlessness one only masters after consecutive, chronic hits to their pride. “Aw, Sasaya, should we petition the school to install a stair lift in the main stairwell for you?”

At this point even Moniwa was starting to get invested, wandering over with a ball tucked underneath his arm and a glimmer of curiosity on his face. To think, Takehito had once thought him the morally upstanding one of their little triad.

“What’s this about a stair lift?” Moniwa asked. Sakunami’s shoulders were steadily climbing up to his ears, which were dusted pink at the tips.

Takehito placed a commiserating hand on his shoulder.

“Just ignore them.”

It escalated when Takehito accidentally let slip that he enjoyed golfing as a past time, something he’d done with his uncle since he was a kid. He was by no means particularly great, but definitely better than any of the clowns who were now giving him shit about it.

“Golf is such an old man’s sport, though.” piped up Futakuchi, one off their new first years, and coincidentally enough, the one who had been benched since the start of the year for mouthing off to the current ace. Takehito wished not for the first time in his life that he were just a few inches taller, just so he could wrap both hands around Futakuchi’s skinny little chicken neck.

Kamasaki popped into their conversation, seemingly summoned, as he would continue to be, by anyone who was not himself calling Takehito an old man. “An old man’s sport, you say?”

Moniwa gently ribbed him with his elbow, though there was no hiding the grin on his own face. “Aw, lay off him, Kamachi. I’ve always thought Sasaya was dignified, in a retiree sort of way.”

“Nah, he’s older than that. Just last week he ordered prune ice cream when we were hanging out after school.” Kamasaki added, shaking his head as though this were some great fault of his.

Takehito vowed to never eat a prune again.

It reached a tipping point during their first training camp of second year, the annual one, which included a several hours long bus ride to the gym they were to be playing and staying at for the week. Takehito couldn’t help it that they’d set off at ass-o’clock in the morning, nor the fact that car rides always put him to sleep, as sitting still with little stimulation for over an hour usually did.

His uncle always took him on car rides when he couldn’t sleep as a toddler, okay?

He could feel himself nodding off, the same way he could sense Kamasaki practically bursting at the seams to do something that would irrevocably damage his pride, lower lip sucked so far between his teeth it raked white lines down his chin.

Eventually, the perpetual motion of the bus and Takehito’s chronic exhaustion from dealing with the most eccentric team this side of Miyagi won out, and Takehito nodded off into a dreamless sleep for the remainder of the bus ride.

He hadn’t even realized something was off at first, not until he was the last to disembark the bus after everyone had helpfully left him to slumber in the back, going so far as to send their new first year manager to shake him awake.

He blinked hard, rubbing at his eyes, coming face to face with Nametsu, who was steadily going pink in the face with what looked like the severe effort of holding herself back from… something. Takehito thanked her, stretched, and ambled off the bus to join the rest of the team in milling about in the parking lot.

It was as Kamasaki burst into full body cackles so hard he had to cling to Moniwa’s shoulder to stay upright and Futakuchi looked up from where he had been picking the dirt out from beneath his nails making fish-eyed eye contact with Takehito that he knew something was up. He wasn’t new to the annual training camp prank war, though he hadn’t really contributed to it last year, more content to sit back and watch.

Of course, that didn’t mean he’d escape this year unscathed, and it seemed it was starting early.

Takehito sighed, turning to face Aone, one of the other first years and also the least likely to have been the perpetrator of the prank.

“Aone.” he said, slowly, with much gravitas. “What did Kamachi do to me?”

Kamasaki was too busy wheezing to even deny it, which only further cemented that he was the culprit.

Futakuchi, helpfully, burst out in laughter of his own, leaning back against Onagawa, who threw a disgusted look over his shoulder and moved to let Futakuchi fall onto the pavement. Futakuchi wheezed as he hit the ground, but apparently had enough breath left in him to point emphatically to Takehito, then Aone, then back again.

Aone handed him his own phone with the front facing camera already turned on. Takehito blinked.

“Ah.” he said.

“You match—“ Futakuchi wheezed, before all the air promptly left his body and he started twitching on the ground.

“You look great, Jiji!” Kamasaki added.

“I’m going to kill you,” Takehito said peacefully, swiping a hand over his eyebrows. They came away streaked with white paint, and the same was true for his hair.

Kamasaki had oh so obligingly painted his eyebrows and hair white as he slept, seemingly to further cement the running joke that Takehito was an old, old man born far too soon.

As training camp came to an end so did the final nail descend in Takehito’s proverbial coffin, which he felt only grew more and more literal by the day.

Aone, dear, kind, fucking huge Aone, landed a solid spike so hard the sound of the ball smacking into the wooden floor of the gym reverberated. Takehito, as any good upperclassman would, yelled in celebration and jumped up to receive Aone’s chest bump.

 _Ah,_ Takehito thought as he rapidly approached the ground, _that’s why Futakuchi’s torso is always covered in bruises._

Aone, to his credit, seemed as alarmed at the fact that he’d sent Takehito plummeting downwards in a floor-destined crash course as Takehito himself was, reaching out just a touch too late to steady him.

Takehito’s back hit the ground with a thud. Several people in the vicinity winced. Takehito wheezed as all the air left his body at once, limbs twitching like a not-quite-dead bug.

Kamasaki leaned into his field of vision. He held out a hand, which Takehito first thought to help him up with, an uncharacteristically kind action for him to take after the veritable wringer they’d put each other through this camp, but instead he held out a square white button on a lanyard. Takehito distantly recognized it as a Life Alert button.

“Jiji,” Kamasaki started, expression schooled into something appropriately concerned that could not hide the mischief in his eyes, “have you fallen and can’t get up?”

“Go to hell,” Takehito wheezed, smacking blindly at Kamasaki’s face. There was a yelp, another thud, and Kamasaki had joined him on the ground, limbs akimbo. Takehito hazarded a glance up. Aone stared back down, unblinking.

“Thanks, Aone.”

Aone nodded.

Moniwa leaned into Takehito’s field of vision, actually offering him a hand up. Takehito took it with all the grace he could muster. Moniwa tutted. “What am I gonna do with you two?”

At the edge of the court, Oiwake sighed.

**Author's Note:**

> hope you enjoyed! i’ve always thought old man sasaya was a funny concept and rang true as one of those running jokes in friend groups that never seems to die, so i banged this out in less than an hour for datekou week 2021! as always, comments, concrit, and questions are welcome in the comments below <3


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